Audio Video News

Cable customers have long complained about inexplicable, inflated fees on their monthly bills and requirements by cable suppliers that they rent set-top converter boxes and other equipment even when it wasn't needed or wanted.

Such complaints may now get their day in court. On January 17, a judge in Spartanburg, South Carolina approved class-action status for a lawsuit accusing cable television company Charter Communications of requiring customers in that state to rent unnecessary equipment or pay a bogus wire maintenance fee. Charter has approximately 250,000 customers in South Carolina.

The case is an outgrowth of one brought last year by Charter subscribers Nikki Nicholls and Geraldine Barber, who in September won their individual lawsuit by default when a circuit judge found procedural errors by Charter's attorneys, including failure to file a formal answer to the suit.

In the January 16 ruling, Circuit Judge Don Beatty placed no limit Thursday on how much Charter's South Carolina subscribers may recover. Attorneys for Nicholls and Barber told reporters that Charter "could be ordered to pay tens of millions of dollars in a class-action suit." Charter may let the case run its course and then pursue an appeal, according to company attorney Billy Gunn. Charter is one of the nation's largest cable companies.